Questions for life coaches

[Mounds]

Figuring there's some life coaches out there.
I think I found my calling in life, to be a life coach. I'm taking my NLP courses in 2010, up to Master Practitioner. Planning on combining this with a life coaching program. Seems like there's a myriad of coaching schools out there. I'm considering taking the Professional Life Coach program from International Coach Academy in 2011. If anyone has a suggestion of a better spot, I'd love to hear about it! Cost isn't really an issue but it has to be distance delivered.
Additionally, could anyone recommend extra courses? Again, going to study Master Practitioner NLP and Professional Life Coach. Reiki and energy healing seem to be taught along with NLP but I can't see that fitting into my scope.
One more: books to read? I have Co-Active Coaching and Coaching for Success. Haven't read through them yet but they're in my cue.
Thanks plenty!

-Tim

[Thekla]

Hi Tim,

I graduated from ICA in September and had mostly good experiences with them. FYI, they are in the process of changing their name to Lobii. If you'd like to hear more about my experiences studying there I'd be happy to discuss over the phone.

I love the Co-Active coaching book. I also found Coachville.com's Coaching Starter Kit very helpful for templates for things like contracts, welcome packets and the like.

Good luck!

[CoolBee]

Well I did my training via The Coaching Academy based in London.
The first 2 day training is completely free so you can get a taster of their approach, then you sign up for personal or small business or corporate or youth or a heady mix of all (plus they do NLP, Advanced etc).
The quality of their training is excellent, especially what they call the Accelerator Days, these are live days you have to attend.
You have to do an assessed client portfolio of so many hours (depending exactly what you are doing) which means writing up each session you run with a client in terms of lessons learnt (about you and coaching, not about the client per se) and specific action points, a written piece eg for the personal 3000 words spread over a number of coaching theory items, for the corporate 6000 words on a topic of how you would use coaching in a corporate environment.
Plus you have to have 3 assessed practicals for the first diploma (and additional for extra) which involve an assessor listening in to a coaching call.

I know people who have trained with other organisations and the requirements are broadly similar:
theory - workshop attendance, say 6-10 days - and practical assessments of your work plus an assessed client portfolio.

While it's not necessary to be trained to be a life coach in most countries, I would thoroughly recommend it and I personally consider it essential. Especially to any would-be coach who thinks they should be doling out advice and suggestions!

I NEVER give advice or suggestions when coaching - confine that kind of thing to public message boards!